LEADER 02677nam 22004573a 450 001 9910917300403321 005 20240901231433.0 010 $a9780520306332 010 $a0520306333 024 8 $ahttps://doi.org/10.1525/luminos.76 035 $a(CKB)36719832700041 035 $a(ScCtBLL)e65071f5-cfcc-4da4-a1d9-3cc4a982d6a1 035 $a(Perlego)2327955 035 $a(oapen)doab33883 035 $a(EXLCZ)9936719832700041 100 $a20240901i20192020 uu 101 0 $aeng 135 $aur||||||||||| 181 $ctxt$2rdacontent 182 $cc$2rdamedia 183 $acr$2rdacarrier 200 00$aWitness to Marvels$fTony K. Stewart 210 $cUniversity of California Press$d2019 210 1$aOakland :$cUniversity of California Press,$d2019. 215 $a1 online resource (1 p.) 311 08$a9780520973688 311 08$a0520973682 330 $aWitness to Marvels traces the development of a unique genre of Sufi-inspired Bengali romances called pir kathas, whose protagonists and plots are wholly fictive. For five centuries these fabulations have parodied indigenous and Hindu textual traditions. Both mimicking and mocking, these parodies adopted a subjunctive tone, exploring a magical world of 'what-if'. They created an Islam-inflected space within a traditional Bengali cultural environment without trying to legislate what ideally 'should be' according to tropes common to Islamic history, theology, and law. The tales' discursive arena, the imaginaire, delineated the realm of possibility for how these tales might exercise the imagination to integrate Hindu and Islamic cosmologies. Tales insinuated themselves into locally relevant discourses through elaborate intertextual connections, subtly shifting presuppositions about the way the world works and what counts as religious authority. As Allah looked on from heaven, the tales routinely assigned Sufi saints, both pirs and bibis, to the pivotal role of avatar, the periodic descent of divinity, equating them to the Hindu god Narayan. Adopting a semiotic strategy to interpret these tales yields a bold new perspective on the subtle ways Islam assumed its distinctive form in Bengal and suggests how we need to reimagine conversion in this region. 606 $aReligion / Antiquities & Archaeology$2bisacsh 606 $aHistory / Asia$2bisacsh 606 $aReligion 615 7$aReligion / Antiquities & Archaeology 615 7$aHistory / Asia 615 0$aReligion. 700 $aStewart$b Tony K$0921004 801 0$bScCtBLL 801 1$bScCtBLL 906 $aBOOK 912 $a9910917300403321 996 $aWitness to Marvels$92065722 997 $aUNINA